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FILM; Winning a Battle but Losing The War Over the Blacklist

By GREG MITCHELL

Published: January 25, 1998

WHEN BATTLES AND bruised feelings over controversial movie ratings emerge, it's useful to remember that what's being graded is merely a strip of celluloid, never the life and reputation of a film director. Yet there was a time when directors themselves were graded politically, and if they received a ''restricted'' rating they faced, quite possibly, the end of their careers in Hollywood.

On Oct. 22, 1950, several hundred members of the Screen Directors Guild convened in emergency session in the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel. One participant later called it ''the most tumultuous evening'' in the history of Hollywood. The showdown over a loyalty oath that would deny any Communist affiliation had finally arrived.

On one side: The guild's president, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, who faced ''the most dramatic evening in my life,'' he later recalled. On the other: Cecil B. DeMille, one of the founders of the movie industry.

The Mankiewicz faction, led by John Huston, George Stevens and William Wyler, met before the meeting to strategize. ''Gentlemen, the fat is on the fire,'' Huston announced. He had scribbled some notes on sheets of paper: ''hypocritical flag wavers . . . unappointed arbiters of loyalty . . . they have employed the very same tactics of those who they profess to have rallied against. . . .''

It was the beginning of the season of the witch in Hollywood. Dalton Trumbo, Ring Lardner Jr. and other members of the Hollywood 10 had just been hustled off to jail, the penalty for refusing, in 1947, to answer questions about joining the Communist Party. A broad blacklist was still only a rumor, but after two years of relative quiet, another noisy, accusatory period was clearly approaching.

Hedda Hopper, the influential columnist, endorsed an industrywide oath, adding that ''those who aren't loyal should be put in concentration camps before it's too late.'' Anti-Communist fervor in California swelled, partly because of the volatile race for the United States Senate then under way between Richard M. Nixon and Helen Gahagan Douglas, a woman he labeled the ''pink lady'' because of her supposed sympathy for left-wing causes.

The 69-year-old DeMille decided that the Screen Directors Guild, which he had run for years, should be the first Hollywood craft union to institute a loyalty oath. It would require that a member declare that he or she had never joined the Communist Party, even though it was legal to do so. Y. Frank Freeman, head of Paramount, had told DeMille that such an action would have a steamroller effect; all of the other guilds and unions in Hollywood would soon go along.

Only one roadblock stood in DeMille's way: Joseph L. Mankiewicz, the newly elected president of the directors' guild.

The 41-year-old Mankiewicz, who had moderately liberal political views, was just emerging as a powerful figure in Hollywood; earlier in the year, he had won Academy Awards for writing and directing ''A Letter to Three Wives,'' and he had just finished filming ''All About Eve,'' which went on to win six Oscars, including those for best screenplay, best director and best picture.

Fearing that Mankiewicz might oppose a loyalty oath, DeMille decided to put the measure to a test while the guild president was in Europe. He assembled the board of the guild on Aug. 18, 1950, to propose a bylaw that would make signing an oath mandatory for members. ''A tremendous principle has to be acted upon here,'' DeMille told the board. ''The question we are asking is, Are you on the American side or on the other side? There are members of the guild on the other side and we all know that. . . .''

WHEN MANKIEWICZ returned to the United States, he questioned the morality and legality of the newly approved oath. But DeMille was only getting started. He screened several of Mankiewicz's films, looking for Communist propaganda. His chief ally, Albert S. Rogell, vice president of the guild, openly accused Daily Variety of being ''un-American'' because it had published one of Mankiewicz's anti-oath statements.

On Oct. 9, at a heated guild board meeting, Mankiewicz continued to rail against the oath, particularly the requirement that the guild send producers the names of all directors not in compliance. He proposed a full meeting of the membership to discuss it, and said that in protest, he would refuse to sign the oath. This would put that year's Oscar-winning director on his own guild's blacklist.

DeMille and one of his key supporters, Frank Capra, disputed the use of the word blacklist, pointing out that producers could still hire anyone they wished.

''This guy's un-American but you can hire him -- that's a blacklist!'' Mankiewicz replied.

''I will not stand for any blacklist,'' John Ford said, ''but why shouldn't a man stand up and be counted?''

''Because,'' Mankiewicz answered, ''nobody appointed DeMille to do the counting.''

Now the intrigue thickened. DeMille called a secret meeting of guild members known to oppose Mankiewicz, and they decided to initiate a recall movement against their president. This group of 16 -- which included Frank Capra, Leo McCarey and Andrew Stone -- would try to accomplish the recall before Mankiewicz had a chance to stop it, but it required the support of 60 percent of the guild's membership, or 167 votes.